A few years ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman used the term “global weirding.” Rising global temperatures, Friedman warned, wouldn’t make things uniformly bad. Things were just going to get weird: more tornados, snowstorms, more rain.

We need a similar term for this year’s Republican primary. Call it “campaign finance weirding.” This has been ignited by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which sparked the development of super PACs.

It turns out that eccentric billionaires can be, well, eccentric. They can provide strategic infusions of cash at key points to fund candidates who seem doomed to fail. They can keep campaigns going well beyond the point of reason.

The result is that we actually have a race — something no one would have predicted even a few months ago.

So this is a win for democracy. Long primary battles are always better — though party insiders bemoan them as unhelpful because they involve the dreaded “circular firing squad.” But candidates tearing down other candidates gets people to pay attention. And people paying attention means people participating in the process.

Big money in super PACs turns out not to cause anything predictable — like the cash flocking to just one candidate, who trounces the rest. Instead, all sorts of weird things happen.

Billionaires like Sheldon Adelson give millions to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to bring him back from the dead again. Or at least to keep him around, as a nettle in former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s side. Meanwhile, Foster Friess is making sure Rick Santorum doesn’t fade away without a fight, and values voters can get their moment in the sun.

The nomination has been wrongly called Romney’s too many times to count. Now it looks as though we are in for a long race like Hilary Clinton vs. Barack Obama in 2008.

One reason, of course, is that GOP primary voters are having a hard time getting comfortable with Romney. Another is the new Republican primary schedule, which spaces things out and awards delegates proportionally. But the big reason may be the weird things money is doing in this election.

There seem to be two inexorable rules of campaign finance. The first is that big money will always find a way to get spent. Always. Put your finger in one hole in the dike and another leak springs. The only question is where that leak will show up.

The second rule is that you can never tell what the effects of any campaign reform or any Supreme Court decision will be — even whether they will be good or bad.

One reasonable prediction after the court’s now infamous 5-4 Citizens United ruling would be that money would flow to the already established candidates. The rich would get richer.

The front-runners, it was assumed, would have an easier time sealing the deal, now that well-funded super PACs could partner with them without any limit on how much they could spend. In primaries, especially, wrapping up the big money early on would ensure the nomination.

Instead, we have a real race. Sometimes it has been ugly, sometimes mean, but it’s always been fascinating – revealing the various fissures in the Republican Party. It hasn’t been a Romney coronation by any stretch.

We have big money in part to thank for that. One major worry of the Citizens United decision is that it would stifle debate, allowing only one point of view to dominate.

But that hasn’t happened in our first major post-Citizens United campaign. We’ve had many, even too many, points of view. There has been a sometimes serious, sometimes frustrating and always weird debate about the soul of the Republican Party and one that promises, or threatens, to go on for a few more months.

We can still worry that too much money in politics is bad, and billionaires are really calling the shots. We should be worried.

But let’s have at least one cheer for what big money is doing this primary season, making it last longer, making it more fun — and making it, well, weirder than it might otherwise have been.